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FIFTH GRADE Part Seven: Segregation no more 
Signs like this one were once common
Tennessee had its share of important civil rights chapters: some well-known and some forgotten. If you understand what happened in Tennessee, you will better understand what occurred elsewhere, because some of the most important chapters in the Civil Rights Movement happened here.
In this section we will list five important points about Tennessee and the Civil Rights Movement. But first of all, let's talk about why there needed to be a movement in the first place. 
An all-black school in Tennessee in the 1940s... PHOTO: TN State Library and Archives Let's say you were living in Tennessee in the 1950s. Would life be different than it is now? When it comes to relations between white people and black people, the answer is yes. In the 1950s, Tennessee had public schools for white students and public schools for black students -- but no integrated schools (schools that included both white and black students). And schools weren't the only things. There were segregated (separate) parks for whites and blacks. Separate swimming pools. Separate cemeteries. Separate water fountains.
A hotel on Memphis' Beale Street in the 1940s PHOTO: Library of Congress As for Tennessee law, it didn't just tolerate this world of racial segregation; it mandated it. Prior to 1954, state law required separate schools for blacks and whites and racial segregation in public places such as public buses. Tennessee even had segregated state parks: Both T.O. Fuller State Park in Memphis and Booker T. Washington State Park in Chattanooga were originally created for African-American use.
Because of the extremely important 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education, this situation changed, and by 1956 Tennessee began integrating its public schools. 
Ida Wells PHOTO: University of Chicago Library * * *
Now onto how and why this situation changed. Here are five points related to the Civil Rights Movement in Tennessee. You should be able to find more information on each by going to the library. 1. Everyone seems to think the Civil Rights Movement started in the 1950s. Not true. Black Tennesseans such as Ida Wells and James Napier were working for the cause of civil rights for African Americans generations before the 1960s. In 1884, for instance, Wells was removed from the first-class ladies coach on a railroad, and she sued the railroad as a result. Wells later conducted a written campaign to draw national attention to the problem of lynchings. 
Myles Horton PHOTO: Highlander Research and Education Center 2. Many leaders in the Civil Rights Movement received training and support from the Highlander Folk School in Grundy County. This institution, started in the 1930s by Myles Horton, encouraged people to form labor unions in its early years and then shifted its focus to Civil Rights in the 1950s.
The Highlander Folk School's had a huge effect on the Civil Rights Movement. It was, for years, practically the only place in the South where whites and blacks could sit, relax, and talk about race relations. Among the people who attended educational seminars at the Highlander Folk School were Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks. 
Septima Clark and Rosa Parks at the Highlander Folk School PHOTO: Highlander Research and Education Center At Highlander, many people learned about non-violent protest methods; people were encouraged to protest what they thought was wrong, but to turn the other cheek if yelled at, spat upon, or even physically attacked. These non-violent methods were based on various things, including the teachings of Jesus Christ in the Bible and the experiences of Mohandas K. Gandhi of India.
By the way, the Highlander Folk School still exists, but in a different part of the state. Now the Highlander Research and Education Center in Jefferson County, it celebrated its 75th anniversary in the fall of 2007. Myles Horton's battle against segregation was a long one. Click here to read his account of organizing an integrated banquet in Knoxville in 1928.
A family in Fayette County is evicted from its home in September 1960. PHOTO: Ernest Withers 3. The battle over the right to vote forced many people in Fayette and Haywood counties to live in tents. Here's what happened:
In the 1950s, two-thirds of the people in Fayette and Haywood counties were black, but few of them were allowed to vote. In the spring and summer of 1959, many blacks in the two counties, along with black and white activists from other parts of the country, tried to change this by organizing a voter registration drive. This didn't work either; when black voters turned up to vote in Fayette and Haywood counties on August 1, 1959, most of them were simply not allowed to do so. 
Two of the many tents in the "Tent City" located on Shephard Towles' land. PHOTO: Ernest Withers At the time, most black people in this part of Tennessee didn't own their own land, but lived in small houses located on farms owned by white people. When some African Americans filed a lawsuit to challenge the election, many white landowners evicted them from their property (or, kicked them out of their homes). Meanwhile, many white businessmen began refusing to do business with black people -- which meant black people couldn't buy gasoline, buy groceries, or go to the doctor, in Fayette and Haywood counties. Many black people began driving to Memphis for their services at that time.
One of the many black families living in one of the Tent Cities
One of the few black farmers who owned his land was Shephard Towles. When white landowners began evicting their black sharecropper families, Towles built some army surplus tents on his land (near Somerville) for these families to live in. (The tents were donated by people of both races). Within a few weeks there were hundreds of people living in Towles' "tent city." Soon there was another Tent City near the Fayette County town of Moscow.
These families lived in tents for more than a year in conditions we would describe today as inhuman. (Dozens of families shared a single outhouse, for instance.) Fortunately for them, they received food and supplies from local and national organizations. In 1962 a federal court made it clear that landowners could not use economic pressure and evict people as a method of discouraging them to vote. This, however, didn't help the people living in the tent cities, since it didn't force landowners to take their tenants back. It took years for many of the tent city residents to find places to live. A lot of them left the county and the state forever. Blacks in Fayette and Haywood counties weren't really allowed to vote until the national Voting Rights Act of 1965. John McFerren was one of a small group of Fayette County black leaders who tried to keep the entire black community supplied; click here to read a short excerpt from an interview with his ex-wife, Viola.
Matthew Walker, Peggy Alexander [later Latson], Diane Nash and Stanley Hemphill become the first blacks to be served at a lunch counter in Nashville. PHOTO: Associated Press 4. Then there was the sit-in movement, which was most dramatic in Nashville.
In early 1960, after months of careful planning and training, about a hundred students staged sit-in protests at stores in downtown Nashville, including Woolworth's and Walgreen's. What this meant is that black and white students would walk into restaurants and sit in sections that had been designated for white people only. When they weren't served, they sat there all day refusing to leave, often while being yelled at and even slapped by counter protestors. They did this on and off for a while, and at first both Nashville newspapers said the students participating in the sit-ins were wrong to do so. But public opinion turned. The majority of the African-American community began boycotting downtown retailers in protest. One of Nashville's newspapers changed its tone and began sympathizing with the students. When Vanderbilt University expelled a divinity student, James Lawson, for his participation and leadership in the movement, many members of its faculty protested, and the school was criticized nationally. 
Looby's home the day after it was bombed PHOTO: Nashville Banner archives; Nashville public library On April 19, 1960, someone threw a bomb through the window of the home of Z. Alexander Looby, one of Nashville's most prominent black lawyers and a man who had been representing the students. No one was hurt. But later that day, an estimated 3,000 people -- mostly black, but some white -- marched from Tennessee State University to the courthouse.
When they arrived, Nashville Mayor Ben West came out of the courthouse to greet the crowd. One of the student leaders asked him if he would order all lunch counters to be integrated. He said he would. Within a couple of weeks, seven stores opened their lunch counters to all races. Nashville's sit-ins had achieved their goals so peacefully that Martin Luther King later referred to it as a "model movement." 
A tank drives by a protestor in Memphis during the sanitation strike of 1968 PHOTO: Wayne State University College of Urban, Labor and Metropolitan Affairs 5. Finally, it was within our borders that the assassination of Martin Luther King occurred, on April 4, 1968.
King was here to show support for Memphis sanitation workers who had gone on strike. (Most, but not all, of those workers were black.) The strike began in February, which meant that trash collection citywide stopped in February. By late March, the strike and the reaction to it led to riots and the occupation of the city by 4,000 National Guardsmen. 
King a few weeks before he was shot PHOTO: Wayne State University College of Urban, Labor and Metropolitan Affairs On the night of April 3, King made his famous speech at Mason Temple in Memphis, predicting that “I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the mountaintop.” The next day, while he was standing on the balcony of the hotel, he was shot and killed by James Earl Ray. King’s assassination led to riots all over the United States, and in the wake of his death the city of Memphis (under pressure from President Lyndon Johnson) began working with the sanitation workers' labor union. QUIZ 1. What word refers to schools that mix people from different races?
2. What is the name of the institution in Grundy County that trained Civil Rights workers in the 1950s? 3. Why were thousands of black people evicted from their homes in Haywood and Fayette counties in 1959 and 1960? 4. (TRUE OR FALSE) People who took part in the sit-in movement were instructed to use defend themselves with knives. 5. Why was Martin Luther King visiting Memphis on April 4, 1968? |
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©2005-2006 Tennessee History for Kids, Inc. All rights reserved.
All photographs taken by Bill Carey for THKF unless otherwise stated.
All photographs taken by Bill Carey for THKF unless otherwise stated.